Our flight from Orlando last week had a very interesting start. A couple minutes after all passengers were seated, one of the flight attendants came on the PA and said that because the plane had to take on a lot of fuel, it couldn’t take everyone that was currently aboard. Five passengers needed to get off.
The airline offered a decent deal for anyone who volunteered to remove themselves: $300 plus the price of their ticket, in return for just taking another flight 5 hours later. That’s a pretty good deal for someone who can take hanging out in the airport terminal for five more hours. But as tempting as that deal was, we didn’t think the boys could handle hanging out in the airport terminal for another 5 hours, especially considering we had already been hanging out for nearly 2 hours. (Read: we didn’t think we could handle the boys hanging out in the airport terminal for another 5 hours.) So we just sat there. As did every other passenger in the cabin.
After a minute, two passengers volunteered to get off the plane. After that, the flight attendant announced that if no one else volunteered, they would have to force the three passengers who boarded last to get off. After another minute, she announced that she was going to get the information for who boarded last. She left the plane briefly, and came back with three names.
Two of the three named passengers were a husband and wife, and they immediately got up and started gathering their carry-ons. The third named passenger to be deplaned turned out to be a mother with a baby.
Since there was other stuff and movement going on in the cabin, it wasn’t immediately apparent that the mother and baby were the ones being ejected. But when I realized what was going on, I leaned to Cowgrit and said, “They’re kicking a mother with a baby off the plane? If you and my mom can handle the boys, I’m willing to take her place. She can’t wait five hours in an airport with a baby.”
Cowgrit immediately nodded and said, “Yeah, do it.”
I stood up and started heading forward. (I’d come back and get my carry-on after I talked with the flight attendants.) When I was about half-way to the front of the plane, I saw the mother and baby returning to their seat. And then everyone on the plane applauded. Huh?
I stopped. I heard someone near me say, to someone else, “Someone took her place.” Oh. As the mother and baby returned to their seat, I turned around and headed back to my own. The suspense and drama was over, and the flight attendants started preparing everyone for departure.
But this whole situation made me wonder: don’t airlines know how much fuel they have to put on a plane for a flight before they sell tickets on the flight? Is this just a version of the old, “the flight is overbooked,” aggravation? Ain’t it kind of rude to kick people off a plane? Ain’t it downright cold to kick a mother and baby off a flight?
We’re back home from week in Walt Disney World. Because we’re busy with wrapping up and winding down from our adventures, I’ll just throw out some scattered anecdotes for this post:
One day we had a lunch reservation at the Hollywood & Vine restaurant in the Disney Hollywood Studios park. H&V is a buffet, with all kinds of foods, but there was no pizza. Calfgrit9 wanted pizza — in his experience, buffets have pizza; Golden Corral has pizza. He was so disappointed that he was ornery and stubborn, and couldn’t (or wouldn’t) find anything else on display that he wanted.
We explained that our plans were to go to Pizza Planet for dinner — a restaurant with pretty much nothing but pizza — but he wanted pizza now. We got him to nibble on a few things, but he did it with a big ol’ pout on his face the whole time. I even took a picture of him pouting, (bottom lip stuck out), over a big bowl of chocolate ice cream with a chocolate chip cookie dipped in it. Poor thing.
Immediately after this “terrible” lunch, he was laughing out loud at a group of Disney street performers acting as a incompetent public works team.
Kids. They can go from one extreme emotion to another in seconds. It makes me dizzy.
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Both boys created a double-bladed lightsaber in the Star Wars store.
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They spent nearly an hour building and racing Lego vehicles in the Lego store in Downtown Disney.
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They could both outscore their mom on Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin, but no one could even get in the same ballpark of my scores.
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They got me to join them in the outdoor pool, after the sun went down — 45-50 degrees even in Florida. The lifeguards were wearing full coats with hoods. Supposedly the pools are heated to 85 degrees, but only the hot tubs, heated to 104 degrees, were comfortable.
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They loved the Wilderness Lodge resort we stayed at, but they both claimed the video game arcade made it the best hotel we’ve stayed at in WDW.
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None of us had to deal with the naked body scanners or the grope pat downs in the airports. But standing in the huge line, with a couple or three hundred other travelers showed that if a terrorist really wanted to kill a bunch of people, all he’d have to do is set off a suitcase bomb at the security checkpoint. No need to bother trying to get a bomb through the security and onto a plane.
My dad kept his 1985 Chevy Monte Carlo in excellent condition. He bought and sold other cars since getting the Monte Carlo in the mid 80s, but they were just cars. The 85 MC was his special ride. When not using it as his main vehicle, he made sure to drive it at least once a week to keep it tuned up; in the past several years he kept it wrapped in two, (not just one), car covers, in his carport when not driving it. This year, its 25th, it officially became a “classic car.”
My dad kept it not only because he loved it, but he hoped to have something “classic” to pass on to his sons. He even wondered if maybe one of his grandsons would like it as their first car. At first he was disappointed when I explained that the logistics of keeping the car, after his passing, would just be too much for me. It would be at least seven more years before Calfgrit9 would even get his license, (10 more for Calfgrit6), and I had nowhere safe to keep it, and really just not the head for maintaining it, (and no decades-long relationship with a good mechanic, like he had). He eventually came to accept the fact that it just wasn’t a functional vehicle for me, my brother, or my sons. But that didn’t diminish his love of it or his wish to pass on something classic to his boys.
It is a damn nice car. And it has memories. My dad drove it regularly as his main conveyance for several years before deciding to turn it into an heirloom. I even used it a few times for teenage dates, though it was just a modern car then; it wasn’t anything classic at that time.
In recent years, I rarely got to drive it. Almost exactly a year ago, I got to drive it for about 20 minutes from in town to his home in the country. Cruising along, Dad said, “Back off the speed a little, son, we’re in no hurry.”
“Dad,” I said, “I’m doing forty-five.”
“Well, it feels like you’re doing more.”
It was his baby, and he’d put a lot of effort and emotion into maintaining it. Someone else at the wheel and on the gas pedal made him nervous. For the last many months, it had remained wrapped up and undriven while my dad went through his last battle with the cancer.
After his funeral, when family and friends were preparing to leave the grave site and head over to the old farm-country church for dinner, I had the idea that my brother and I arrive at the church in the Monte Carlo. Brogrit agreed that this was a fantastic idea, one that would make Dad smile.
As it turned out, it would have been a fantastic idea had it come to mind 24 hours earlier. When we went by Dad’s old house, (another thing he left for us to inherit), we found the battery dead. (Like I said, it had been sitting for many months by this time.)
We didn’t have a set of jumper cables with us. Brogrit even went to a neighbor’s house and rang the bell in hopes of borrowing some cables, but no one answered the door. All we had was Dad’s plug-in battery charger, and that takes hours to charge a car battery. While we tried to figure out how to bring the old car to life, we talked about also needing a theme song for our arrival at the church.
We pictured the two of us cruising up to the church, with the car windows down, our theme music playing, (maybe some AC/DC in our style, or maybe some Waylon Jennings in Dad’s style). We’d pull into the parking lot, stop, and get out of the car looking all cool in our black suits. . . but it was not to happen that day. It’s the story of my life: I have the coolest ideas a day late.
Well, we left the battery charger plugged in and hooked up, and we went on to the church dinner.
The next day, the car was good to go. We wanted and needed to take the car out to have it inspected and to renew the license tags. Brogrit called dibs on the first drive, and we headed out. I found some old cassette tapes in the glove compartment, and chose the one with our dad’s name on it: a mix tape of country classics.
Among other songs, we listened to George Jones’ He Stopped Loving Her Today
As many times as I’ve heard that song through the decades, it was on this day, cruising in my newly-passed father’s car, that I first learned/realized the actual story in the song. It now puts a little lump in my throat when I hear it.
As we cruised through town on our errands, Brogrit commented that driving the car made him a little nervous. I laughed and said I understood. After a while, he let me drive. As soon as I sat down behind the wheel and cranked up the engine, my nerves twisted in me. This was our dad’s baby, the car he had kept and taken care of for 25 years. As much as I really wanted to take it for a spin around town a few minutes earlier, at that moment, with the my hands on the steering wheel and my foot on the gas pedal, anxiety was creeping up my spine. Even before putting it into gear, I started worrying about screwing up and damaging that car somehow. What if I clip the curb? What if someone hits me?
“I said I understood about being nervous to drive this,” I said. “But I really didn’t until now.” Brogrit laughed.
We left the car with Dad’s long-time mechanic for an inspection, and Brogrit had to start heading back to his home. When I picked the car back up, to take it back to Dad’s house, I decided to stop by the DMV office, (located in the local mall), to renew the tags because it was on the way.
I parked the car way out in the middle of the parking lot, because that was what Dad always did — to protect it from errant shopping carts and careless car doors. After getting the new year sticker for the license plate, I walked back out to the parking lot. Right beside Dad’s car was a well-maintained old Chevy Nova.
Turns out the Nova driver was an old-car aficionado, and wanted to look over Dad’s Monte Carlo. I opened the door for him to look in, and he exclaimed, “Man, it’s like brand new!”
“My dad took good care of it,” I said, beaming with pride.
We talked for a few minutes, and he told me about his Nova and another car that he had just purchased, (he was at the mall for the DMV, too). I know next to nothing about cars, old or new, so I didn’t know whether to be impressed or not. He asked what I was going to do with this Monte Carlo, and then gave me his name and phone number.
He said good bye and went toward the mall, and I got in the Monte Carlo to take it back to its home. When I got back to Dad’s old house, I stayed in the car to finish listening to the end of the mix tape and heard Ronnie Milsap’s Back on My Mind Again
When the tape finished, I pushed the button to pop it out. Then I backed the car into the carport and put the double cover on it. I patted it gently and said, “Thanks, Dad,” before leaving.
I hate that we’re going to sell it, but really, neither of us can keep it and take care of it like it needs. It needs an owner who has the knowledge and wherewithal to keep it up as well as Dad did. It should be honored better than either of us could attentively manage. I’m starting to think of the situation as more putting it up for adoption than putting it up for sale.
Besides, if Heaven is all it’s said to be, Dad has a divine duplicate of this vehicle with him cruising through the clouds. Stay cool, Dad.
Now he has done it again, to a set of books of even more sentimental and cherished value.
That’s my World of Greyhawk boxed set books and map, copyright 1983. I actually have two sets, and they were both protected in a plastic bag — not just a regular plastic bag, but in the extra thick plastic bag that the regular plastic bags come in.
I am more than “upset” with that dog. I’ll say no more so I’m not incriminated should anything happen to it. (Wishing, very hard, doesn’t count as an actual criminal act, in a court of law.)
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Picture me as a boy, about 16 years old, (27 years ago), who is a big fan and player of Dungeons & Dragons; I had been playing the game with my close and good friends for three years. D&D was a major part of my teenage life, as my primary hobby, and as a standard social activity. During those first years, I had heard of and read snippets about the World of Greyhawk — the first D&D campaign world. But the limited information given in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, several Dragon magazine articles, and various adventure modules of the late 70s and early 80s were really only tastes and teases.
When I found the boxed set for the full campaign world, I was elated! Here was the full write up, in all its glory, for the world that E. Gary Gygax, (the father of D&D), started as the base adventure locale for his game. The box contained two full-color maps that when put together were 3 feet by 4 feet — this was the biggest poster I had ever seen. It was beautiful. It was awe-inspiring. It was imagination-inspiring.
The books in the box described the nations, the natural terrain, and every little detail of the world, right down to some languages and racial dress. Even wilderness encounter charts. The inside cover of the main book had full-color illustrations of the various national and organizational helardry. This was all amazing!
One of my friends was with me at my home when I first opened the box and looked through the awesomeness revealed. We spread out the map on my living room floor and just went crazy matching up the labels on the poster with the information in the books. This was our first introduction to what a real, full D&D campaign world should be. This was our first introduction to what a real, full fantasy world should be. To us, this was bigger and better than Middle Earth.
I immediately took up using the World of Greyhawk as the campaign world for my D&D game. And later, after I started creating my own campaign world, I emulated the WoG pattern very closely.
The World of Greyhawk set — maps and books — is a very solid foundational part of my D&D gaming history, and are thereby a very solid part of my geeky being. I made sure to display one of the books and part of the map in my recent “ubergeek” photo, (just to the right of the file cabinet). These items are a treasured part of my history and life. Honestly, they are dear to me.
And now they have been destroyed by . . . *sigh*. . . a puppy. I even had two copies of the set, and the damn animal destroyed both sets of books. Thank goodness I have one of the map sets framed and hanging on the wall. (The books were sitting on a table in front of the framed maps.)
I’m heartbroken. I’m not even exaggerating for humor. I might be able to find another copy of the set, but it won’t be the same. My set is ruined. The set that I have literally held and read and loved and cherished and protected and saved for nearly 30 years is ripped to shreds.
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